A video conference is more and more widely used in every field of industries. It is a part of daily work to hold a video conference between companies in different regions and between departments in a company. During the process of a video conference, the following scenario is common: as shown in FIG. 1, a conference terminal 1 originally in conference 1 together with a conference terminal 2 switches from conference 1 to conference 2. This process is called conference switching. A conference terminal corresponds to a conference site. Each conference site involves attendees and conference terminals. Attendees are people who join in the conference. The attendees join in difference video conferences by using their conference terminals, and the conference entering process in each conference is implemented through interaction between a terminal and a multipoint control server, for example, MCU (Multipoint Control Unit).
In the conference switching solution according to the prior art, the conference terminal requesting switching to a conference first shuts down the connection channel of the current conference with the multipoint control server, including: shutting down the signaling of the current conference; shutting down a media channel connecting to the current conference, in which the media channel includes a video channel, an audio channel, and other media channels; quitting the current conference; and then calling a destination conference and opening a corresponding connection channel, including establishing the signaling with the destination conference and opening the media channel to enter the destination conference.
During the process of implementing the above conference switching, the inventor finds that the prior art has at least the following problem:
During conference switching in the prior art, the terminal needs to interrupt the connection channel with the multipoint control server, and re-opens the connection channel to implement the conference switching. In addition, the attendees need to perform complicated operations on the terminal, for example, hanging up a call, redialing numbers, and calling to enter the conference. Therefore, the switching speed is low. Further, the remote image of the current conference must be interrupted, and consequently the entire conference switching process is complicated and not friendly.